In which he finally sleeps through!

Hooray! At 11 months James is now crawling and sleeping through the night. In fact he's sleeping an awful lot at the moment - yesterday he had had 12 hours' sleep at night, then a 30 minute nap in the morning (woke him by moving him, he would have slept longer) and a 2.5 hour nap in the afternoon (I woke him by getting something from his room, again he might have slept longer). I suppose he's using up tons of energy, plus he's had a cold and now has conjunctivitis so he probably needs lots of sleep to recover from that.

He finally slept through the final night he slept in our bedroom. The next day we moved him into his own room, and since then he has slept from 7.30am-6.30am or so most nights. He has woken up in the night maybe three times in those three weeks. We were on holiday for a week of that and he still slept beautifully there. I'm beginning to miss having him sleeping next to me in bed, that never happens any more!

His own room is very successful; he is happy in his cot in there, and he has lots of space to play and crawl around. He can pull the box of toys off the lowest shelf, and his books are also accessible to him on a low shelf so he can pull them all out. He absolutely loves turning the pages of books and reading them to himself. This month he has particularly enjoyed books with flaps.

James finally started crawling on holiday in Ireland. It was ideal, we were staying in a two bedroom lodge with vast expanses of empty carpet and not very many things, unlike at home where we are constantly having to remove tempting items from him, such as Andrew's guitar cables, bins, coins, coat hangers etc etc. We have been doing some serious baby proofing, boarding up the balustrades, putting up stairgates at the top of the stairs and in the kitchen doorway, moving small items off low shelves and so on. James is really enjoying being able to explore the flat and go to things which interest him. The cats' water bowl and the cat flap are of particular interest. The cats are not so keen on this development: they have had to learn to jump over the baby gates and they preferred it when James wasn't able to chase after them.

James is also pulling himself up on the furniture, though not always very successfully. He seems to have a permanent bruise on his forehead (and all over his lower legs). I suppose the next few months will be full of bumps, bruises and grazes - oh joy. He can stand holding onto one hand, but hasn't yet figured out cruising round the furniture.

Still just the two teeth, but he has had teething symptoms recently and I think it won't be long before the first upper teeth come through. He is continuing to eat well, feeding himself most of the time now, and is down to three milk feeds a day (morning, lunchtime and evening). We'll probably try to drop the lunchtime feed during the next month or so before I return to work, though there will only be one day each week I'll be away from him all day, so he can always still have a feed on the other days if he wants one. After that we'll be down to just morning and evening and we'll keep those going as long as we both want to.

James has just started pointing at things in the last few days - it's very sweet. He loves waving at people and posing for the camera.

I start back at work in six weeks time, and James starts settling in at nursery in four weeks today (on his birthday). He's going to be going there for two half days (8am-1pm) and one full day (8am-6pm), and on one other day he'll be looked after by Gran (though I will also be around as I'll be working from home). I'm not really looking forward to going back to work, but it will be nice to have some money coming in again, and to think about something else other than the next meal time and nap time.

That's all till next month... when my little baby turns one! Not such a baby any more.